When I was 18, my world was going to raves and making trip-hop music in Toronto. I started off in electronic-not a lot of people know that. Why do you think this dancey, club-ready sound felt right for your new material? We were listening to it in the car, and my friend Anjulie came up with the line: “I’ll eat your man, devour him whole!” The beauty of that is like, I would never reference myself, but it took one of my best friends to be like, “No, girl, fucking reference yourself!” Then we were like, let’s reference all the hits. I think he was watching Blade or something, and he got the idea to make this dark, queen-of-the-dance-floor beat. We actually wrote “Eat Your Man” in the car!ĭom already had the beat.

We all got together for four days in Philly and wrote a bunch of records. When I got to Australia, I even performed on his midnight set we performed remixes of “Give It to Me” and “Say It Right.” After that, we got together again in his studio in Philly with my friends Anjulie and Jim, who worked on Loose with me as the vocal producer. Dom sent me a whole Dropbox folder, and we started exchanging voice notes and building a rapport.

I then asked my manager if he could send me some beats for the new album that I’m working on. I was curious about him, and looked him up on Apple Music. I looked at the lineup and I saw this DJ named Dom Dolla was headlining.

I hadn’t played a show in six years, so I wanted to take that challenge on. But, my manager asked me if I wanted to do a New Year’s Eve gig in Australia. Nelly Furtado: I had taken some time off after having kids, and I wasn’t in the studio or singing for about three years.